According to the study the result
of the debit form legislation was $86 billion in Louisiana consumer savings and
$38 billion in savings for Louisiana merchants. The study estimates that 551
jobs were created in Louisiana as a result of the debit card swipe fee
reduction.

Reducing the cost for merchants
to swipe debit cards put $5.8 billion back into the hands of consumers through
lower prices, which led to sufficient increased spending to support 37,501 new
jobs, the report finds.

"The facts are in and the
numbers don't lie. Debit reform is helping consumers, and both consumers and
the economy are big winners," said MPC Chairman Mallory Duncan, senior
vice president and general counsel of the National Retail Federation.
"Debit card swipe fees are eating up less of consumers' purchasing power,
and that has yielded significant savings. These are long-term benefits that
will steadily boost the U.S. economy."

Internationally prominent
economist and advisor to Presidents, Prime Ministers and Fortune 100 companies
Robert J. Shapiro of Sonecon LLC conducted the study. It examined the debit
card swipe fee reforms required under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and
Consumer Act. The study is being released on the second anniversary of the
implementation of the Durbin Amendment, part of the Dodd-Frank legislation. The
reportfindings include:

·When debit
swipe reform went into effect in October 2011, the average debit swipe fee on
cards from covered banks dropped from 48 cents to 24 cents per transaction,
saving consumers $5.8 billion in lower costs for good and services and saving
merchant businesses $2.6 billion in 2012. The savings in turn supported 37,501
new jobs.

·These
savings and job gains would have been substantially larger if swipe fees had
been cut to 12 cents as originally recommended by the Federal Reserve Board. If
that cut had been implemented, an additional $2.79 billion would have been
generated in consumer savings, $1.2 billion more in merchant savings and an
additional 17,824 jobs would have been created.

·If swipe
fees for all credit card transactions had been held to the same level as debit
fees in 2012, consumers would have saved an additional $15.4 billion and
merchants would have saved another $6.9 billion, which could have supported
98,600 additional jobs per year.

·With both
debit and credit reform in place, consumers and merchants could have realized
total annual savings of $34.9 billion, supporting a total of 153,976 additional
jobs every year.

The report uses a 24-cent
interchange fee for credit card transactions as a reference. The actual number
could be higher or lower. The reference is well above the pending European
Commission's proposal to cap credit card swipe fees at 30 basis points (i.e.
3/10 of 1%). At that level, the swipe fee on the average $40 retail transaction
would be 12 cents. This figure was used as an objective example of the fees,
savings and jobs that might result from credit reform but was not a statement
as to what the most appropriate credit card swipe fee level would be.

"Putting an end to the great
swipe fee rip-off will make a significant dent in unemployment at a time when
every job counts," said Dave Carpenter, Chairman of the National
Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) and President and CEO of J.D.
Carpenter Cos., Inc. "In addition, small business owners, who historically
have been the primary drivers of job creation in the U.S., also will have more
cash on hand to invest in their stores and new hires."

"Without reform, these swipe
fees will continue to drain consumer and merchant spending power and ultimately
will slow down a full economic recovery," said Carpenter.

An additional finding of the
study showed that if Visa and MasterCard had not increased debit card swipe
fees on small purchases as a way of taking advantage of the Federal Reserve's
mistakes, consumers would have saved another $690 million in 2012, supporting
an additional 3,044 jobs.

Recently a lower federal court
judge ruled that the Federal Reserve Board did not implement the Durbin
Amendment as the law required and ordered it to further reduce swipe fees on
debit cards. The Federal Reserve has appealed the decision.

MPC also has released state-by-state numbers for consumer savings and jobs
with swipe fees reduced to 24 cents for credit cards and to 12 cents for debit
cards. MPC took the findings in Dr. Shapiro's report and distributed them
proportionally based on each state's share of the U.S. gross domestic product.

Credit card swipe fees, which can
run as high as 4 percent of a transaction's value, are now the second highest
operating expense for merchants, after labor. With retail profits operating on
narrow margins, there is no room for merchants to absorb this expense.
Consequently, the fees are passed along to consumers, who end up paying more
for goods and services even if they pay by cash or check.

Swipe fee revenues have tripled
in the U.S. in the past 10 years, generating around $50 billion for banks
annually, while the actual cost of processing a debit or credit card
transactions has been falling. Swipe fees in the United States are the highest
in the industrialized world. Swipe fees in Europe cost merchants one-eighth the
cost to merchants in the U.S. Meanwhile, Visa and MasterCard control 80% of the
marketplace and set the fees in secret so their banks won't compete on price.